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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Fancy Armchairs

I needed a couple more of these chairs for the living room so I cut my pattern out and started gluing. I didn't have any cabriole legs so I made some out of cardboard and glued the pieces together on the curve. When they were dry, I filled in the backs with glue, then vinyl spackling.

I reinforced the legs with wooden pieces underneath to add some strength to the chairs and added a layer of thin 1/16" balsa to the chair seats. Then I made the "carved" roses out of cardboard, then curled back the petals from layers of the card before gluing them to the chairs.

The chair pads and backs are made from foam core with the top layer peeled off and the edges rounded before covering with plain fabric. I used colored pencil to draw my fabric pattern on the chair seats and backs. The frames were gesso'd and gold paint was brushed on leaving some white showing through before the pads were glued on.

I pretty much followed the instructions in the book with these except I didn't use cabriole legs all around, I made straight legs for the back two legs.

The trim is glued all around the front, back and arm pads to finish it off.

The backs are just covered cardboard with no padding. I just need one more chair for the living room now. This chair would look sweet with aida cloth on the back and painted shabby white too. Aida cloth looks a lot like cane or open work on these miniature chairs.